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growth   hacking

 has 

developed as a way of supporting the profitable growth of these businesses.

Growth hacking

An approach to improving 

the commercial results 

from online services 

through structured testing 

and optimisation of 

marketing approaches.

Box 10.1

Growth hacking

Andrew Chen, an entrepreneur who is an adviser and investor to many  start-  ups, 

describes a growth hacker as follows in his post Growth Hacker is the new VP 

Marketing (Chen, 2012).

Growth hackers are a hybrid of marketer and coder, one who looks at the traditional 

question of “How do I get customers for my product?” and answers with A/B tests, 

landing pages, viral factor, email deliverability, and Open Graph. On top of this, they 

layer the discipline of direct marketing, with its emphasis on quantitative measure-

ment, scenario modeling via spreadsheets, and a lot of database queries.

This quote shows that many of the features such as a focus on testing and learn-

ing through conversion rate optimisation (CRO) are not new – indeed, they have been 

featured in this book for several editions – but it shows a change in mindset in how 

business transformation can be achieved. Another key feature of growth hacking is 

examining techniques for getting viral growth through encouraging users to share their 

experience. The growth of Hotmail from 0 to 12 million users before it was bought by 

Microsoft is a favourite anecdote of growth hackers. For Hotmail the sharing was rapid 

due to the email signature: ‘PS I love you. Get your free email at Hotmail. Signature.’ 

Today, encouraging sharing through social sign-on and social sharing is more an 

approach sought by growth hackers. These techniques have helped companies like 

LinkedIn grow from 13 million to 175 million users, according to Schranz (2012), who 

explained that Facebook’s Growth team started by establishing a simple framework of 

things to measure and improve to make it easier for everyone to understand what to 

focus on and why it matters:

● 

Acquisition – Get people in front of your product . . .  

● 

Activation – Provide a great initial experience . . .  

● 

Engagement – Keep people engaged, deliver value . . .  

● 

(Virality) – Get people to recommend your product . . . 

Some of the principles of growth hacking are being adopted by existing busi-

nesses, looking to enhance the sales of their digital channels. For example, publisher 

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Part 3  Implementation

  Different types of change in business 

 Viewed at a large scale across an entire industry, change takes two forms.